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Chris Stringer thinks that people might be shrinking. You can read a bit about this on page 4 of the Equus thread in the History group. He claims the middle ages were an anomaly.
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Grant
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Hatty wrote:
| Columbo is an exception to the usual whodunnit format in that the audience knows in advance who dunnit, their interest is sustained by watching how the 'tec uncovers the truth. |
There have only ever been three different types of detective:
- Sherlock Holmes type. Solves case by being cleverer than everyone else
- Philip Marlowe type - Solves case by being more streetwise
- Columbo - Solves case by arresting the most successful or most arrogant suspect
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| But if you visit British medieval castles, or Tudor houses, Hampton court for example, you'll notice is that the doorways are shorter, the beds shorter |
Possibly both because knees bend?
Does anybody know about the heights of ceilings... chairs and tables... the length and thickness of broom handles and such... shoe sizes...?
Suits of armour are a pretty direct indication of physique, but what do they say about the statures of their wearers through time? Do they say anything at all about "the people"?
| There is significant evidence that a positive secular trend, apparently due to improved socioeconomic conditions, has led to taller stature today compared with 150-200 years ago. |
This is the era of the urban population exceeding the rural for the first time. The cities were bursting with squalor. I'm not surprised growth was stunted. But whose bodies made it into the studies?
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| Possibly both because knees bend? |
I don't know if you're serious but actually it struck me that Henry VIII was known to be tall and the beds at Hampton Court didn't seem big enough to accommodate him if he wanted to stretch out. Also that the doors might be low for heating and structural reasons. But I'm making this stuff up -- I have no idea if it's true or not.
| This is the era of the urban population exceeding the rural for the first time. The cities were bursting with squalor. I'm not surprised growth was stunted. But whose bodies made it into the studies? |
I don't know whose bodies. I haven't read the article.
I guess that we must be looking at diet as the cause. I read the thread and thought this height thing was vaguely relevant to it. Not as immediately entertaining as the Nazi stuff earlier, but slightly interesting because diet would seem to have the capability to affect almost everyone's physique for a sustained period -- which was sort of the topic at the start.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| because diet would seem to have the capability to affect almost everyone's physique for a sustained period -- which was sort of the topic at the start. |
Well, yes, this is where we came in. Ever since Mendel's pea experiments, it has been taken for granted by orthodoxy that height is a genetic thing and yet over and over again we have evidence that it is in fact environmentally (or at any rate other-) induced. They can't both be right.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| I don't know if you're serious... |
Yes, the point being that they like to point to doorways and beds expecting us (because they did) to accept that the matter of height is settled. But neither of these is a good direct indicator and there are plenty of others, if anyone bothers to look. (Dunno if they do.)
That only applies to the specialists in the appropriate era(s), of course. No one ever reconstructs a roundhouse and assumes any particular correlation between the doorway they made and the height of the occupants.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | [Men (in this society, I don't know about Africa or Titianite Italy) tend to refuse to have sex with fat women |
Get serious. Fat men certainly go for fat women, and skinny as I am, I find some fat women quite sexy, depends on other factors. I certainly don't find all thin women sexually attractive, and I can't be the only one. Admittedly I once turned down a fat woman, but lived to regret it. Arrogant youth imagines they'll be there inviting you every time you turn around.
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It's the order of events that's wrong. The unhappiness comes first, for all the known and unknown reasons, then the obsessive eating to cover it over, mostly junk food naturally, and it's the unhappiness that is so unattractive. It creates a veneer of stupidity, which is an emotional problem in origin, which later becomes an intellectual habit: if you don't exercise the intelligence, it atrophies. But the dichotomy is not only between the supposedly intelligent and the supposedly stupid: a lot of perfectly intelligent people are also perfectly stupid, self-blinkered, that's what you talk about in THOBR when you describe the dreary situation of academia, isn't it?
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Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds:
Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.
His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.
The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months. |
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html
But the most interesting part is:
| Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent. |
Strange, isn't it?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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AE would make two points as to the true cause. Firstly the opening to para 2
| It's a combination of factors including... |
is a dead giveaway that the reason is not known. And when flicking through the possible reasons it is wise to downgrade any reason that definitely means it's not the islanders' fault. Which is probably all of them since nobody is allowed to speculate negativity when dealing with third world people.
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Grant
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One thing proves it's not the fault of Western life styles - the fact that they are also the world's best rugby players.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I think you mean the world's dirtiest rugby players. (See my strictures on negativity). On the basis of professionals per total population you might be right but this is because they do nothing all day except sit around playing rugby. (I am determined to be negative.)
PS What about Samoa where half the buggers sit around all day playing American football?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | It's a combination of factors including... |
is a dead giveaway that the reason is not known. |
You are absolutely right! The truth is always simple.
| And when flicking through the possible reasons it is wise to downgrade any reason that definitely means it's not the islanders' fault. Which is probably all of them since nobody is allowed to speculate negativity when dealing with third world people. |
True. But I expect it has something to do with diet.
Who are the other fat people?
Eskimos.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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Once again, science catches up with Mick Harper.
This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine--an excellent measure of prior consumption--the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease.
-- It's Time to End the War on Salt, Scientific American
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